Victor
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Open-source business sucks! No wait, it doesn’t!
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1 min read
Sigh. The current issue of the Economist has a story called “Open, but not as usual: As “open-source†models move beyond software into other businesses, their limitations are becoming apparent” which I had to read to learn about these limitations. But the article — while mentioning the usual glitches — is generally bullish on open-source…
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Cumulus has planned a conference titled Design Thinking & Innovation: Towards an Asian Perspective in Singapore with Victor Margolin as keynote speaker… …debating about these topics are a challenge for a symposium aspiring to offer an egression, not a series of positional parametric rhetoric on design issues, but a kind of cynosure to engage, postulate…
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Apple’s R&D investment – too low or too high?
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3 min read
“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” — Steve Jobs, Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998…
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Balance control with collaboration – First Draft
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3 min read
To solve tough problems, we need the active participation of a diverse group of people. Instead of control residing only with managers, each person on a team should have the authority and responsibility to contribute fully. Rather than command them from above, the team leader should facilitate the team’s efforts. Since the industrial revolution we’ve…
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Numbers can be prototypes
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2 min read
Something I knew on a surface level but didn’t internalize until taking a Financial Modeling class was that numbers can be prototypes. When financial people build models in a spreadsheet, they’re building prototypes. Just as a designer might sketch on paper or carve a piece of foam, financial modelers will quickly sketch in a spreadsheet…
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Burning questions
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2 min read
I had an interesting discussion today with a graduate student who is honing in on a thesis question in the intersection of design, innovation, and business. Along the way I remembered I had composed a list of questions that came up during a project last year. These are not necessarily great thesis questions, but they’re…
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Shiny, happy, innovative people
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1 min read
…the business world is full of highly touted prescriptions for being more innovative… in my experience, few solutions actually address what I believe to be a fundamental enabler of innovative behavior in organizations… The key to unleashing innovative behavior is asking the question “how can I help each person in my organization achieve a state…
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Krugman’s Rules for Research
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2 min read
Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist, has some interesting small pieces on his site, like How I Work which includes his Rules for Research… Listen to the Gentiles, Pay attention to what intelligent people are saying, even if they do not have your customs or speak your analytical language. Question the question,…
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Agile publishing
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1 min read
37 Signals’ new book Getting Real is out, and looks like a great read about applying agile techniques and spirit to web app development. It’s agile both in the content and in having small chapters, something we’ve seen in books like Godin’s Purple Cow and what I’m working on by re-interpreting agile principles for general…
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Cost-to-serve
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1 min read
Cost-to-serve is defined as the total supply chain cost from origin to destination, it incorporates such factors as inventory stocking, packaging and re-packaging, shipping, and returns processing. So explains Tim Laseter, Elliot Rabinovich, and Angela Huang in S+B. I’d say products that have poor cost-to-serve profiles, like shoes, just haven’t redesigned their businesses to take…
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WOW — I DeSIGN
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1 min read
Dr. Charles Burnette’s IDeSiGN — Seven Ways of Design Thinking is the best thing I’ve seen in a while, a curriculum for teaching children how to pursue their goals using different ways of thinking. This is designing. It is a process of creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions…
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Innovation in poached eggs
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1 min read
Surrounded by the twin mystiques of brunch and Hollandaise, Elaine Corn offers a better, simpler cooking method (boil water in a shallow skillet, add vinegar and salt, slide the eggs in and turn the heat off, let cook in covered skillet for three minutes). I can tear that page out of my Betty Crocker cookbook…
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Use simple tools
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2 min read
The tools we use to create and communicate should be so easy to use we rarely ever think about them. With simple tools we naturally focus on what the tool allows us to do. The famous typography designer Matthew Carter has said that when you read you should not see the letters on the page,…
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Thought for Friday: Relax
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1 min read
Two researchers at Pace University here in New York compared results from dozens of studies of thousands of employees in 21 occupations to find which exhibit more stressors. Did fire fighters and police officers come out on top? No. Financial and business people did. We worry more about poor job fit, management problems, and work/home…
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Frontiers in lower customer service costs
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1 min read
As Vonage prepares for their IPO, are they enacting measures to improve their cost structure? Your email is important to us but due to high email volume we are unable to accept your email at this time. For immediate assistance, please visit the Help section of our web site to search our library for related…